A solid debut

By most accounts, Lithuania had a good half-year in the rotating presidency of the European Union’s Council of Ministers. EU officials and diplomats from other member states describe its performance as solid and competent, and it managed to bring to completion negotiations on a range of important files, from environmental legislation and the annual budget to banking union.

Two blemishes mar this otherwise respectable record: the summit of the EU’s Eastern Partnership in Vilnius late in November, and biofuel legislation. The summit was supposed to be the highlight of Lithuania’s term. Instead, it imploded in a complete breakdown in relations with Ukraine – although to a large extent that was out of Lithuania’s hands (see below). There is no such excuse on biofuel. Lithuania produced an unfortunate compromise proposal that angered everyone and derailed the legislation (see below).

Timing issues

At first glance, time seemed to work against Lithuania. Holding the presidency in the second half of a year is always tough. Barely has the new country taken over and found its bearings before routine business grinds to a halt in Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg as a summer break of at least four weeks begins. For Lithuania – it took over from Ireland on 1 July 2013 – it was doubly difficult, since this was the country’s first time in the presidency. It had no established routines and no hard-won expertise to fall back on.

But the timing, in this case, also had a positive effect. The prospect of elections to the European Parliament in May 2014 helped focus minds on completing legislative files. There was an urgency generally shared by the European Commission, the Council and the Parliament to get deals done by the end of 2013 to ensure there would be enough time for plenary votes before MEPs hold their last Strasbourg session in April. There was also a fear that negotiations would be disrupted or delayed if they dragged on into Greece’s term in the presidency, which began on 1 January.

As a consequence, there was a flurry of agreements in the days immediately preceding the December holidays. In all, there were deals on 137 legislative acts in the second half of 2013, compared to just 17 during Ireland’s tenure in the first half of the year. However, these figures are somewhat distorted: it was Ireland that finally got (non-legislative) agreement on the 2014-20 budget, after very difficult negotiations, which in turn unblocked around half of the legislation that was agreed during Lithuania’s term.

Other achievements also need to be put in perspective. For example, Lithuania did succeed in getting the member states to agree a common position on a controversial proposal to bolster control measures under the posting of workers directive, something that eluded both the Irish and the Cypriot presidencies.

A deal was reached after Poland peeled away from the blocking minority, taking Croatia and Ireland with it and leaving the UK and Hungary outvoted. Yet credit for the deal must go to France’s skilful diplomacy, engineering the breakthrough in a private meeting between the leaders of France and Poland.